James Frey Gets a Bright, Shiny Apology from Oprah
May 11, 2009, 2:40 pm
James Frey photographed by Terry Richardson for Evgenia Peretz’s June 2008 article, “James Frey’s Morning After.”
It’s been a year since James Frey’s re-entrance into the book world with Bright, Shiny Morning, which comes out in paperback May 12 (and contains new material, including a bit originally deemed inappropriate for election season). For as many painful events as he has been through in his life—like going from the top of book world to national punch line—last year was an emotional crucible. Frey got his identity back, suffered unimaginable heartbreak, and received an astonishing, self-reflective call from Oprah Winfrey, the woman who helped make him a superstar and then publicly turned him into road-kill.
Still feeling like a pariah when the new book came out, Frey was hugely relieved that reviewers put the scandal aside. “I was expecting to get killed everywhere,” he says. Though he was, as he puts it, “slaughtered” in the Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly called it both a “train wreck” and “a real page-turner,” The New York Times,Time, and Washington Post raved. He’s now in talks with Ilene Landress, executive producer of The Sopranos, to turn it into a television show.
Just as his career was getting back on track, his personal life became horrifically derailed last July, when his newborn son, Leo, died 11 days after birth from spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disease that was, at the time, undetectable by prenatal testing and is untreatable and incurable. “I’ve been through some difficult things in my life,” Frey says. “Nothing comes close to this.”
Having built another bedroom in their apartment—which would now be empty—the Freys (who also have a four-year-old daughter, Maren) couldn’t face the thought of living there and decided to move to Amagansett. But two months later, their hearts still set on having another child, they decided to stay put and adopt. After a seven-month-long endeavor, they adopted a 22-month-old boy named Ellis from a Russian orphanage. “A healthy, awesome, sweet little boy,” says Frey. In the fall, Ellis will begin going to the preschool where Frey volunteers as a tour guide and Class Dad.
In spite of the personal tragedy, Frey’s life is approaching something he’s not quite used to: happy and normal. Even the scandal over A Million Little Pieces might be finding closure, as they say. Last spring, Oprah executive producer Sheri Salata called him to talk about coming back on the show—which for various reasons didn’t work out—and in the fall he got a call from Winfrey herself.
She’d had an epiphany of sorts while meditating that morning. It was time to apologize for what she put him through on that fateful day. She explained that her uncharacteristically harsh evisceration of him was coming, unfairly, from her own ego and sense of having been personally betrayed—a redemptive moment fitting, you might say, of The Oprah Winfrey Show. “It was a nice surprise to hear from her, and I really appreciated the call and the sentiment,” says Frey. “When I heard her say, ‘I felt I owe you an apology,’ I was very grateful. As far as I’m concerned, that part of my career is over and behind me and I’m looking forward to writing more books.”
Up next is Illumination, a theoretical third book of the Bible, written from the perspective of people surrounding a guy who may be the Messiah. “It’s my idea of what it would be like if the Messiah were walking the streets of New York City right now.”